Washoe County Library System

"Inspired by her own family’s experiences following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Susanne Pari explores the entangled lives within an Iranian American family grappling with generational culture clashes, the roles imposed on women, and a tragic accident that forces them to reconcile their guilt or forfeit their already tenuous bonds. Set between San Francisco and New Jersey in the late-1990’s, In the Time of Our History is a story about the universal...

"The word "orphan" might not seem to apply to a fifty-three-year-old woman. Yet this is exactly how Sandra feels as she finds herself motherless, alone like "a glove left behind at the bus station." What just might save her is her search for someone else gone missing: Marie, the black-and-white cat of her friend, Roz, who ran off the day they arrived from Tacoma. As Sandra and Roz scour the streets of San Antonio, posting flyers and asking everywhere,...

"I don’t want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt. Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother, Wayne, is seven. One day, when they’re alone together, there is an accident and Wayne is lost forever. His body is never recovered. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt. Their father leaves, starts another family elsewhere. But their mother can’t give up hope and launches an organization dedicated to missing children....

"It is 1864 and Eliza Spooner's husband, Will, has joined the Kansas volunteers to fight the Conferedates, leaving her with their two children and in charge of their home and land. Eliza is confident that he will return home, and she helps pass the months making a special quilt to keep Will warm during his winter months in the army. When the unthinkable happens, she takes in a woman and child who have been left alone and made vulnerable by the war,...

After moving to Brighton to deal with her grief after the death of her boyfriend, twenty-something Holly's chance meeting with a retired book-club host leads to new friends and new opportunities for healing. "Twenty-something Holly has moved to Brighton to escape. But now she's here, sitting on a bench, listening to the sea sway... How is she supposed to fill the void her boyfriend left when he died, leaving her behind? She had thought she'd want...

"A small, declining town in Ohio. A family bereaved by terrible loss. A searing narrative about how American lives touch each other across divides both real and imagined... Set in failing small town in central Ohio, The Heart of It All asks how one manages, in an America of increasing division, to find a sense of family and community. Focusing on the members of three families: the Baileys, a white family who have put down deep roots in the community;...

"When Parsifal, a handsome and charming magician, dies suddenly, his widow Sabine—who was also his faithful assistant for twenty years—learns that the family he claimed to have lost in a tragic accident is very much alive and well. Sabine is left to unravel his secrets, and the journey she takes, from sunny Los Angeles to the bitter windswept plains of Nebraska, will work its own magic on her."--

"Lee Mandelo's debut Summer Sons is a sweltering, queer Southern Gothic that crosses Appalachian street racing with academic intrigue, all haunted by a hungry ghost. Andrew and Eddie did everything together, best friends bonded more deeply than brothers, until Eddie left Andrew behind to start his graduate program at Vanderbilt. Six months later, only days before Andrew was to join him in Nashville, Eddie dies of an apparent suicide. He leaves Andrew...

"Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Oprah Daily, Vulture, Today.com, Elle, and Lit Hub. From “one of the finest and bravest novelists at work today,” (Vulture) award-winning writer Idra Novey has conjured a novel of “astonishing and singular” honesty (Rumaan Alam) with two determined, unforgettable female voices. Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean and her beloved but estranged...